


Sparked Rivalry

by Dragoneisha



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dabbing, Dinner, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Somnophilia, Nookworms, Prank Wars, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Psionics, Social Anxiety, egging a house but instead you just egg eridan ampora
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-08 08:47:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21233036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragoneisha/pseuds/Dragoneisha
Summary: Sollux rarely escapes John's pranks, and when he does, it's by the skin of his teeth. He's still going to be smug as shit about it. After all, John doesn't know how close he came to losing their little game.And then he loses.





	Sparked Rivalry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cooingRatbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cooingRatbird/gifts).

> hey whats up PA good luck on your life i gave you fluff with horny hints at the end 
> 
> you said to include eridan and dave too, so they show up, and i like them. i hope this is what you wanted! <3

Eridan triggered the trap.

Of course he did. He’s a little idiot who grabs everything shiny because he thinks it’s his, follows people around because he wants to see what they’re doing, and other various compunctions of his personality, most of which boil down to “he’s super fucking nosy”.

However, that means Sollux doesn’t get caught. Which is good, because - don’t tell John, but - he would _definitely_ have been egged.

“Oh, shit,” Dave laughs from the second story. “Oh fuck. I gooshed the wrong dude.”

Eridan snarls, shaking himself like a barkfiend, sending gooey, clear egg yolk spattering all over the place, including the side of John’s hive and Sollux. (Thank God for psionics. He just makes a little wall between him and Eridan, and he doesn’t get gross and eggy.) He squints his slitted eyes up at Dave, who’s still holding the cardboard egg carton, trying not to laugh. He’s not doing a very good job.

Sollux can see Eridan tracking himself a route up the side of the hive, but those claws of his will definitely mess up the wall, and he doesn’t want to hear John bitch about it. Though, seeing him shirtless fixing it… very nice idea.

Wait, no, he probably will wear a shirt. Damn, foiled again.

Sollux sighs, and helps out. Eridan startles when the fizz of psionics starts up against his skin, but he seems a lot more satisfied when Sollux lifts him to the second-floor window.

“Oh fuck,” Dave says, the most succinct he’s ever been. “John, we -”

Sollux throws Eridan in the window to enact his vengeance, and laughs as Dave shrieks as high-pitched as anything Terezi’s ever done. It is, to put it simply, fucking hilarious. 

When John turns into wind and sneaks out the window, Sollux is ready. As he reforms, Sollux grabs him, even as his hands go in his pockets and he cocks a hip, the pinnacle of complete casual...ness. Casual. Causality? No.

Fucking human words. He’s cool as shit, basically. 

Something in the room full of egg and lacking Egbert breaks, and John just looks confused to be caught.

“Nice try, dipshit,” Sollux lisps, cocking his chin up in a mockery of showing his throat. It is a troll show of dominance, because he won, and he won _so hard_. +3 Prankster’s Gambit. “You got the wrong guy.”

“You cheated! You involved an outside party!” John cries, wiggling in his psionics. He could just turn into wind, but they both know they’re doing this because it’s fun. John wants the jabs and barbs, like in his human comedies. Troll comedies have more literal barbs, and jabs are usually replaced with crosses. Maybe a roundhouse. “That’s against the rules!”

“We didn’t set up any fucking rules,” Sollux reminds him, because they didn’t. “The prankster gets the points.”

“Well, my prank still went off!”

“Yeah, on _Eridan_. He would eat soap if you told him he couldn’t do it, it’s really not that hard to get Eridan.”

They both pause to consider that.

“Okay,” John grumbles, going limp in Sollux’s mental hold. Lifting a struggling seatroll and keeping hold of one of the world’s most slippery humans takes a lot of focus, and it’s gonna give him a headache if he keeps doing it, but Sollux isn’t willing to be done yet. He has to end with a bang. Cement his victory. “Yeah, it isn’t that hard to get Eridan.”

“I’m gonna put you in the trash can,” Sollux says, and before John can finish shouting _”What?!”_, he dunks his matesprit in the garbage.

There’s a sinister, sadistic glee to watching John wiggle around in the waste receptacle, even if the wastechomper already came around today, and there’s nothing in it but stink. It’s just funny. And it means he wins.

John and Sollux have been fucking with each other from the minute they occupied the same planet, and it hasn’t really let up since the beginning. At some point along the way, they just… ended up together, through a complicated series of events including a fake human proposal and a lot of deadpan acceptance of completely stupid shit. You know, the way anyone gets together in this night and age.

Watching his funky little legs kick around, Sollux has a quiet moment to himself, displaced from everything else. He’s not manic, right now, but it’s with an almost manic certainty that he knows he is a very lucky troll, no matter how dumb John’s hijinks are. They’re a pretty good pair. He’s happy he leaned into it, on whatever whim he was feeling that day.

“Dab on him!” Dave shouts, from where he’s being dangled out the window by his ankles. Eridan shakes him as punishment for shouting. Way to ruin the moment, chucklefucks. 

Sollux considers the idea, putting his hands on his hips. It would be pretty funny, but... is he willing to do that to himself? Is that the kind of image he wants to cultivate? He considers the pros and cons, of two minds about it for a solid couple minutes. While he’s busy, John struggles his way out of the trash can and collapses, beaten, on the lawnring. His long, lanky legs stick into the street, hips twisted on the curb. Truly, the epitome of suffering.

Two pairs of elongated incisors nearly nick his lower lip with how much he grins in that moment. John’s chest heaves, and Sollux has to take a minute just to look at him. There’s dirt in his hair. He stinks to high heaven. This, Sollux thinks, is his chosen matesprit, defeated in every capacity.

Sollux looks him in the eye and dabs.

_

“You did something to this,” Sollux says, almost boredly.

John’s planitive, offended cry peaks over the busy restaurant’s general ambience, and Sollux would be more worried about it if Dave and Eridan weren’t already bickering louder than anything else. Something about those two coming along make a great social interaction shield. They handle all the looks, and he and John can just have a nice weird human date in peace. 

Except they can’t because he did something to Sollux’s food. It’s in the look in his eyes, and the way the lettuce his meal sits on (gross) is shifted just slightly to the side. 

John probably thought the faint red hue of the light and the fact that this is a troll-serving place, meaning there isn’t much in the way of lighting at all, really, would cover his tracks, but all that does is show his hand. Sollux doesn’t have the best night vision, but he sure as shit has night vision, or, as trolls call it, “vision”. They’re nocturnal, John’s just a fucknut who forgets the basic biological advantage Sollux has in dimly-lit areas. It’s like playing chess with a wiggler. Even if you read ‘em the rules, they’re not going to listen.

“I didn’t,” John lies.

“You did.” Sollux flicks over a chicken tender with one uneven claw. It’s the only one he hasn’t bitten down, but it’s still a jagged thing, half an inch at most longer than its brethren. “I can fucking smell it, John.”

“I would never do such a thing in public,” he lies again, because apparently he thinks that’s going to work. John’s an idiot.

They bicker, for a while, Sollux pushing his plate away and John pushing it back. Along the way, it stops being about whether John did it or not. It’s about the principle of the thing. John is offended Sollux would ever think he’d do such a thing, as in, the thing he definitely did. Sollux is just not going to put whatever horrible thing John’s put in there in his mouth.

When Sollux starts to get a little more annoyed (not in a bad way, more cathartic than anything) Eridan steps in.

“ - an’ like, sure, you can ferment the damn thin’ an’ eat it then, but when y’do that, you’re still puttin’ so much fuckin’ urea in your mouth it’s basically drinkin’ piss,” Eridan says, his eyes on Dave as he leans over the table and grabs both their plates.

“What, you’re not a piss drinker? I hear piss drinking is the fun new hobby,” Dave says, leaning on one elbow. Sollux stops in the middle of calling John a hamfisted little shitheel to watch as Eridan takes both their plates. 

He’s not the steadiest as he leans over the table, but there’s something admirable about the complete refusal to look away from Dave as he singlehandedly ruins John’s cunning plans. Sollux is so going to owe him after this, though. God damnit.

“Yeah, can’t say I’m interested in it, either straight from the horrible little source or in th’form of shark flesh,” Eridan explains, as he switches the places of John and Sollux’s plates. Sollux stares in quiet, barely-restrained glee as he leans back in his chair. He flicks a fin in acknowledgement, which is about as much as Sollux is gonna get. He’ll take it. “ ‘sides, blackfin’s way tastier and a lot easier to catch. The troll Greenland shark ain’t work eatin’, ‘specially without any eyes to munch on when you clean it.”

“Wow, that’s completely disgusting,” John says, looking at everyone’s meals. “Eridan, why’d you switch my plate around?”

There’s a little catch in his voice. Whatever he’s done, he’s about to take the brunt of it, and Sollux could not be happier. Karma, justice, and all that other bullshit may not exist, but if they did, they would all be sitting at this fucking table about to watch John suffer. Until they show up, he’s happy to be a stand-in.

“Oh, just figured if there wasn’t an issue with Sol’s food you could put it in your fuckin’ mouth then,” the seatroll replies, sipping his margarita, “so you can both shut the fuck up already.”

Elbows braced on the table, Sollux perched his sharp chin on intertwined fingers, fixing John with the sweetest smile he can muster. It’s less sugar and more… apple. Sweetness isn’t exactly his forte. 

He doesn’t even need to say anything. Watching the fear spread over John’s face is enough. 

“Swallow it,” he cackles, and if he had a camera he’d take a picture. As it is, he’s going to commit it to memory. “I win again, shitlord.”

_

It appears John has decided he’s very tired of Eridan and Dave ruining his plans, because the next one he hatches takes place when they’re alone.

Sollux wakes up feeling… weird. He’s not exactly an evening person, so that’s not abnormal, but it’s a good kind of weird instead of the usual bad kind. That’s new, and not entirely welcome - Sollux is of the opinion that when good things happen, bad things are probably showing up soon after.

This feeling is centralized mostly in his loins. By that, he meens he _feels_ like there’s something in his nook.

Well, if John started fingering him, that’s sure a new development. He didn’t think the guy was into sopor play. Or, uh, any play. Dude’s repressed as shit, lol. He’s opening up, but certainly not fast enough to be fingerblasting a half-asleep troll, matesprit or not.

Not really a fingerblasting sensation, though. It’s less fingers and more fin_ger_, with weird-but-welcome twists deeper inside him than he thinks John can _reach_, especially without any flexibility in that human bulge of his. His bulge is out - it may have been for awhile - and he’s horny as shit.

He lifts his head out of the sopor and is rewarded with a few little twists and wriggles inside him, which startle him enough to make his knees lock up. Waking up, Sollux may be groggy as shit, but that sure as hell don’t feel like fingers.

“Th’fuck,” he says, and ends it with a gasp as whatever that is presses deeper in.

“Pranked,” John says from across the room.

Without his glasses and knocked _firmly_ off-kilter, Sollux just blinks at John, as much as closing and re-opening already squinting eyes can be considered blinking. Clearly, some sort of prank is happening, but he’s not exactly sure how that relates to anything else.

He feels a little bit of material be pulled off his inner walls, a delightfully strange feeling, and it clicks what’s happening.

“Did you drop a fucking nookworm in here,” Sollux asks, already knowing the answer.

John just smiles.

Sollux’s head lolls back as he feels it slither deeper into him. He can’t feel the individual chitin plating, he doesn’t think anybody’s that fucking sensitive, but now that he’s a little more awake and aware, it’s very, very clear what’s going on. He hasn’t felt a nookworm in ages.

“Where did you even,” he starts, and it trails off into a “hhhhhh” sound as the worm doubles back on itself for a moment. The nookworm is doing what it does best: worming its way into his nook and getting him the hell off. He's definitely going to ruin this sopor.

“I have my ways,” John says, mysteriously, and Sollux is enjoying this too much to snap at him. He goes limp, head leaning back against the rim of his recuperacoon. 

“You’re cleaning this out after,” he mumbles, settling down for a nice drowsy worm-session. Worm-sesh, as the cool kids call it.

“Yeah,” John giggles, “but I won.”

Sollux’ll give him that one.


End file.
